Week 9 Blog
November 15, 2015
I resonated with this article a lot more than I thought I would. The article, written by our Professor Caroline Kieu-Linh Valverde, spoke of the discrimination and harsh analysis that mixed race Vietnamese Americans have to go through. All this discrimination just because the Vietnamese community feels the need to classify these people into categories. Even though I am not of mixed race ethnicity, I can still relate to some of the struggles that mixed race Vietnamese Americans go through. For example, the stereotype about the accent from the northern region of Vietnam being "proper" Vietnamese speech. My family is from Hue, which is central Vietnam. My accent sounds a lot harsher than Nam, which is spoken in the northern region. When I meet Vietnamese-speaking people for the first time, I usually fake the northern speech pattern in order to fit in and appear more educated, even though the accent has nothing to due with my education level. People judge my Hue accent for being harsh and hard to understand, thus making it unfavorable. I've grown to appreciate my Hue accent, but I still fake a Nam accent in order for some people to understand me better.
Question: Why would accents have to be associated with educational level?
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